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Yesterday, I kept seeing calls from a Chicago suburban newspaper on our office phone and my cell phone. But, we couldn’t get to them when they came in and there was no message until 6:00 last night.When I checked voicemail, I heard a reporter leaving an urgent message with this request: “I’m hoping you’re still _______’s PR representative and that you can help me find them. We’re doing a story and we need to talk to them right away.” he said. While I won’t give away the ending . . . I will tell you how to make the most of your PR agency relationship. Follow these guidelines whenever you engage a new PR agency. Making the Most of Your PR Agency Relationship:1.Send out a news release or announcement with the name of the agency, contact number, email and website. [They will do this for you.]2.Post this information on your site and on every news release.3.Outline your media relations policy for your board, your agency and the press so that everyone knows who to contact when.4.Decide when and how to route calls and inquiries. Will you use the PR agency’s number or your number?5.Appoint a spokesperson and let the press know who it is so that the same person gets quoted every time.6.Use the PR agency to screen media calls and interview requests if you need more time or a professional perspective before you answer.7.Think of your PR agency as a critical business partner who helps you manage and communicate not only your news, but your relationships with all of your “Publics” – internal, external, community and industry.8.Ask the PR agency to build an online creative archive where you, your customers, the media and the world can access all your news releases, images and links to stories online.9.Request an updated media list at least twice a year so that you’ll have current contact information on hand.10.Refer your PR agency to other groups, businesses and vendors that you interact to build on synergies within your network and theirs.Bonus: When do change agencies, let the media know right away and maintain a good relationship with your former PR partner. You never know when they’ll take a call for you.

To request permission to reproduce or republish this article, contact connect AT corywestmedia DOT com.

Today it doesn’t take a website or a blog to connect with a community online, but it does take some strategic planning and effort. Before you begin answering questions on a site, take some time to think about who you want to be known by and for what do you want to be known.

Who Do You Want to Reach?

Answering questions on a site like LinkedIn puts you in front of millions –if they’re searching for your topic. But, maybe smaller is better, especially if having local connections will help you meet your business goals. If you don’t need international influence, then look for smaller centers of influence in forums and groups. Keep in mind that you’ll need a broad reach on a wide platform if writing a book is one of your goals.

Professional Industry or Client-Centered Comments?

Joining in with a professional industry group will keep you up-to-date and allow you to get feedback. Because you are all providing the same professional service, joining a group where your customers are will bring you more business. Look for groups where you can easily rank as one of the five top experts or better yet, own the category. Watch out for forums where you’ll be saying the same thing as dozens of other people. Even in these situations, adding a personal touch such as a reference to website of the person who asked the question or a story from your experience will set you apart.

How Should You Keep Track of Your Answers?

Compose your answers in Word and save a copy to use in your newsletter, blog or file. Drop in the URL or topic so you can go back and track the follow-up conversation. Be on the lookout for partnerships and connect with people you’d like to know better.

How Much Time Should You Spend?

Budget a specific amount of time and don’t go over. It’s easy to get carried away with comments. Resist the urge to be a know-it-all. Start out by setting aside an hour at the beginning or end of the day to answer comments. Scanning questions takes less time. On same days, you may not have any questions to answer at all.

About the author . . .

An in-demand publicist, professional speaker and marketing communications consultant since 1990, Barbara Rozgonyi is grounded, edgy and prophetic. “Panoramic PR,” Barbara’s latest project, compresses everything she knows into an affordable, manageable course that teaches small business owners, entrepreneurs, authors, experts, coaches and anyone else who wants more free publicity how to get completely covered by being fully exposed. Claim a free report and get automatic articles like this one at http://www.powerprsecrets.com.

To request permission to reproduce or republish this article, contact connect AT corywestmedia DOT com.

Today it doesn’t take a website or a blog to connect with a community online, but it does take some strategic planning and effort. Before you begin answering questions on a site, take some time to think about who you want to be known by and for what do you want to be known.

Who Do You Want to Reach?

Answering questions on a site like LinkedIn puts you in front of millions –if they’re searching for your topic. But, maybe smaller is better, especially if having local connections will help you meet your business goals. If you don’t need international influence, then look for smaller centers of influence in forums and groups. Keep in mind that you’ll need a broad reach on a wide platform if writing a book is one of your goals.

Professional Industry or Client-Centered Comments?

Joining in with a professional industry group will keep you up-to-date and allow you to get feedback. Because you are all providing the same professional service, joining a group where your customers are will bring you more business. Look for groups where you can easily rank as one of the five top experts or better yet, own the category. Watch out for forums where you’ll be saying the same thing as dozens of other people. Even in these situations, adding a personal touch such as a reference to website of the person who asked the question or a story from your experience will set you apart.

How Should You Keep Track of Your Answers?

Compose your answers in Word and save a copy to use in your newsletter, blog or file. Drop in the URL or topic so you can go back and track the follow-up conversation. Be on the lookout for partnerships and connect with people you’d like to know better.

How Much Time Should You Spend?

Budget a specific amount of time and don’t go over. It’s easy to get carried away with comments. Resist the urge to be a know-it-all. Start out by setting aside an hour at the beginning or end of the day to answer comments. Scanning questions takes less time. On same days, you may not have any questions to answer at all.

About the author . . .

An in-demand publicist, professional speaker and marketing communications consultant since 1990, Barbara Rozgonyi is grounded, edgy and prophetic. “Panoramic PR,” Barbara’s latest project, compresses everything she knows into an affordable, manageable course that teaches small business owners, entrepreneurs, authors, experts, coaches and anyone else who wants more free publicity how to get completely covered by being fully exposed. Claim a free report and get automatic articles like this one at http://www.powerprsecrets.com.

When you think about Google, you think about the metrics and the clear value, but Anderson thinks about granularity. It acknowledges the reality of who we are, traditional marketing hasn’t found a way to address our narrow interests as well as the broad.

We have a liquid market of advertisers trying to reach a narrow market. There are incredibly relevant ads. Each one of you has your own special niche interest. With Google Ads, you now have the capacity to match you with an advertiser who is incredibly relevant to your interest. This is finally the world of commerce and media introducing us to people we’ve wanted to meet all along.

Not new – 100 years ago we were fragmented by geography

What changed was mass media: the arrival of radio, TV, all those things had the effect of snapping us into culture lockstep. The 20th century was an anomaly. We’re all different and we have our niche interest. With the Internet, we have microcast, we have narrowcast. We don’t have to settle for one size fits all. It’s always been true and been suppressed.

The way we measure this is to look at hits and blockbusters

We can measure the decline by looking at specific media. On March 21, 2000 *NSYNC released No Strings Attached. This became the best- selling alum of all time with more than 10M copies in total. Since then, the number of hit albums has fallen by 60%. But, there’s more music made and listened to than ever before: 70,000 albums per year.

The number of hits and blockbusters are falling off the cliff. We’re redistributing our taste. That reflects who we are. Our taste differs. The marketplace can reflect that because we have a place for everything. That allows for minority taste to be measurable and surfaceable. We’re changing our taste to reflect what we really want.

In TV, as the number of channels has grown, the market share of the top 10 shows has progressively fallen. Attention is redistributing over time. We like our hits and we like our niches.

What’s ending is the monopoly of the hits.

This is not a problem with TV, you cannot aggregate audiences that big in a world where there is so much choice.

Average ratings for the #1 show in each year has fallen – there was very little competition for your time during the peak of the water cooler area. Five years from now, we’ll be redefining success. We have to de-stigmatize narrow success: when you’re reaching a smaller audience, you’re reaching an audience who is really engaged.

Even in Hollywood, you see this trend.

The per capita attendance continues to fall and will never reach its high point from the mid 20th century.

It used to be we could market our way into a hit. Movies measure the fall off between the first and second weekend. In the old days, we could advertise enough to guarantee three weeks of good attendance. Now we see the difference between marketing-driven attendance versus the audience size relative to the level of quality of the film.

If anyone could consistently figure out how to make hits, they would. But they can’t.

We try to go for the average consumer. We have to focus on the core and where most people are. Expensive distribution requires you to focus on the biggest clumping of consumers. The bell curve goes back to Napoleon’s army when soldiers were fitted by their chest size.

Pareto, an Italian economist, found that 80% of the wealth was in the hands of 20% of the population. His findings led to the 80/20 rule and well as unrest over the desire for equality in Europe, which led to Marxism. Efforts to redistribute wealth failed.

This comes out in every natural system where network effects or word of mouth come into play. Popular things get more popular. Success breeds success. Why do we see markets in bell curves when the Parento slope is the reality?

For the last hundred years, we’ve only seen the blockbusters. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen the Internet as a marketplace with infinite shelf space. What we’re finding is that although no single one of them sells a lot, the new growth market makes up about one-third to one-half of the hit.

The New Growth Market: Products You Can’t Find Anywhere But Online

Numbers shown from Rhapsody, Netflix and Amazon. There is a market out there as big as the market we already knew: 40% of all music sold is only available online. In two years, that will be 50%. Netflix has 85,000 movies. Blockbuster has 3,000 movies per store.

In each case the demand for products available only online is the fastest growing market.

Where does this demand come from – refined taste, rural areas, urban areas, hard-to-fit, vegetarian shoes [shoes without animal products]? Converse makes Zappo’s leading vegetarian shoe online. Vegetarian shoes are made with canvas and a synthetic sole. Imagine the college student who thinks they are buying cruelty free shoes. Converse is owned by Nike – these same people are boycotting Nike for sweatshop practices. By the way, Anderson says it’s totally unfair.

Average number of turns/year: 2

At Walmart, the product needs to sell twice a week to maintain its shelf space. At Zappo, the product/shoe may sell only two pairs per year, yet it’s a success because the consumer went to the site for the experience. Anderson will work with them on how to do recommendations to drive them further down the tail.

Started the long tail of beer: micro brews or regional, hand-crafted beers. Red Bridge is an allergen-free, gluten free beer. What is different about beer now? They’re seeing a shift to one size fits one. They’re seeing demand for products that aren’t for everybody else towards people wanting what they want. [Note: Quenching thirst for more than a flavorful beer, the company’s Here’s to Beer site features videos and interviews. Today’s release is on the happenings at the New York Jedi Club. After you watch the video, you can click on over to minglenow, connecting people through beer. Branding beer goes beyond taste into progressive packaging.]

The long tail of education is home schooling. Google serves them massively.

The Long Tail of Media

Blogs vs. traditional mass media. Google ranks sites and blogs in terms of incoming links. Boing Boing, a popular blog with authority site status, has more incoming links than Fox News, Time, NPR, etc. Engadget has more power than MSNBC. PostSecret has more incoming links and gets more attention, than LA Times and CNN Money. DailyKos ranks higher than the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and ESPN.

Brian Lam, an intern in Anderson’s office just about a year ago, runs Gizmodo, which now has more incoming links than 98% of U.S. newspapers.

Now the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine [media maven Martha Stewart graces the current issue as the doyenne of the digital/home arts DIY crowd.], this is the world Anderson inherited. Magazines used to compete with other media, now they have competition from 70 million blogs. It’s very difficult for mass media to reach the granular level. They have to find a way to engage the way blogs do.

We need to measure success differently than number of hits or viewers. That’s not necessarily appropriate; this is the aggregate demand in media.

Second Life is about the demand at one moment in time.

Is there a lasting value to having them visit an empty corporate presence? It has caused them to think differently about success – maybe building community and starting conversations is a better measure. We’re shifting from a lecture model – traditional media. Online, at best, we create a well-lit place to start a conversation. and think: I should not be dominating.

The ants have a megaphone.

Jeff Jarvis had a Dell that didn’t work. Jarvis blogged about his Dell Hell experience at his blog, Buzz Machine.“Dell Hell” became a bad meme. They didn’t realize how pervasive their experience was. For the first 30 days, Dell didn’t know about it. On Day 30, it came to Dell’s attention. This is an example of why traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore.

Your brand isn’t what YOU say it is. . . it’s what Google says it is

Anderson showed clips from Google trends results for Dell + sucks. Dell can’t influence the WikiPedia entry. To check Google Trends, type in your own company + sucks to find out what people are saying about you, [Note: also an insightful resource to track search trends in general]

Example: Dell + sucks

Dell responded and has become a better company because of it.
The number one city searching for Dell Sucks was Austin.

Dell now has a dedicated staff to watch for blog comments. If you blog about your problem, they’ll get back to you within 7 days.

There was no time for questions or comments from the audience. We met up with Anderson at the book signing where he told our 17-year-old college marketing/social media tracker and our 12-year-old tween marketing advisor he’s thinking of starting a Wired Teen magazine. And, this fall Wired Science will debut on PBS

When you think about Google, you think about the metrics and the clear value, but Anderson thinks about granularity. It acknowledges the reality of who we are, traditional marketing hasn’t found a way to address our narrow interests as well as the broad.

We have a liquid market of advertisers trying to reach a narrow market. There are incredibly relevant ads. Each one of you has your own special niche interest. With Google Ads, you now have the capacity to match you with an advertiser who is incredibly relevant to your interest. This is finally the world of commerce and media introducing us to people we’ve wanted to meet all along.

Not new – 100 years ago we were fragmented by geography

What changed was mass media: the arrival of radio, TV, all those things had the effect of snapping us into culture lockstep. The 20th century was an anomaly. We’re all different and we have our niche interest. With the Internet, we have microcast, we have narrowcast. We don’t have to settle for one size fits all. It’s always been true and been suppressed.

The way we measure this is to look at hits and blockbusters

We can measure the decline by looking at specific media. On March 21, 2000 *NSYNC released No Strings Attached. This became the best- selling alum of all time with more than 10M copies in total. Since then, the number of hit albums has fallen by 60%. But, there’s more music made and listened to than ever before: 70,000 albums per year.

The number of hits and blockbusters are falling off the cliff. We’re redistributing our taste. That reflects who we are. Our taste differs. The marketplace can reflect that because we have a place for everything. That allows for minority taste to be measurable and surfaceable. We’re changing our taste to reflect what we really want.

In TV, as the number of channels has grown, the market share of the top 10 shows has progressively fallen. Attention is redistributing over time. We like our hits and we like our niches.

What’s ending is the monopoly of the hits.

This is not a problem with TV, you cannot aggregate audiences that big in a world where there is so much choice.

Average ratings for the #1 show in each year has fallen – there was very little competition for your time during the peak of the water cooler area. Five years from now, we’ll be redefining success. We have to de-stigmatize narrow success: when you’re reaching a smaller audience, you’re reaching an audience who is really engaged.

Even in Hollywood, you see this trend.

The per capita attendance continues to fall and will never reach its high point from the mid 20th century.

It used to be we could market our way into a hit. Movies measure the fall off between the first and second weekend. In the old days, we could advertise enough to guarantee three weeks of good attendance. Now we see the difference between marketing-driven attendance versus the audience size relative to the level of quality of the film.

If anyone could consistently figure out how to make hits, they would. But they can’t.

We try to go for the average consumer. We have to focus on the core and where most people are. Expensive distribution requires you to focus on the biggest clumping of consumers. The bell curve goes back to Napoleon’s army when soldiers were fitted by their chest size.

Pareto, an Italian economist, found that 80% of the wealth was in the hands of 20% of the population. His findings led to the 80/20 rule and well as unrest over the desire for equality in Europe, which led to Marxism. Efforts to redistribute wealth failed.

This comes out in every natural system where network effects or word of mouth come into play. Popular things get more popular. Success breeds success. Why do we see markets in bell curves when the Parento slope is the reality?

For the last hundred years, we’ve only seen the blockbusters. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen the Internet as a marketplace with infinite shelf space. What we’re finding is that although no single one of them sells a lot, the new growth market makes up about one-third to one-half of the hit.

The New Growth Market: Products You Can’t Find Anywhere But Online

Numbers shown from Rhapsody, Netflix and Amazon. There is a market out there as big as the market we already knew: 40% of all music sold is only available online. In two years, that will be 50%. Netflix has 85,000 movies. Blockbuster has 3,000 movies per store.

In each case the demand for products available only online is the fastest growing market.

Where does this demand come from – refined taste, rural areas, urban areas, hard-to-fit, vegetarian shoes [shoes without animal products]? Converse makes Zappo’s leading vegetarian shoe online. Vegetarian shoes are made with canvas and a synthetic sole. Imagine the college student who thinks they are buying cruelty free shoes. Converse is owned by Nike – these same people are boycotting Nike for sweatshop practices. By the way, Anderson says it’s totally unfair.

Average number of turns/year: 2

At Walmart, the product needs to sell twice a week to maintain its shelf space. At Zappo, the product/shoe may sell only two pairs per year, yet it’s a success because the consumer went to the site for the experience. Anderson will work with them on how to do recommendations to drive them further down the tail.

Started the long tail of beer: micro brews or regional, hand-crafted beers. Red Bridge is an allergen-free, gluten free beer. What is different about beer now? They’re seeing a shift to one size fits one. They’re seeing demand for products that aren’t for everybody else towards people wanting what they want. [Note: Quenching thirst for more than a flavorful beer, the company’s Here’s to Beer site features videos and interviews. Today’s release is on the happenings at the New York Jedi Club. After you watch the video, you can click on over to minglenow, connecting people through beer. Branding beer goes beyond taste into progressive packaging.]

The long tail of education is home schooling. Google serves them massively.

The Long Tail of Media

Blogs vs. traditional mass media. Google ranks sites and blogs in terms of incoming links. Boing Boing, a popular blog with authority site status, has more incoming links than Fox News, Time, NPR, etc. Engadget has more power than MSNBC. PostSecret has more incoming links and gets more attention, than LA Times and CNN Money. DailyKos ranks higher than the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and ESPN.

Brian Lam, an intern in Anderson’s office just about a year ago, runs Gizmodo, which now has more incoming links than 98% of U.S. newspapers.

Now the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine [media maven Martha Stewart graces the current issue as the doyenne of the digital/home arts DIY crowd.], this is the world Anderson inherited. Magazines used to compete with other media, now they have competition from 70 million blogs. It’s very difficult for mass media to reach the granular level. They have to find a way to engage the way blogs do.

We need to measure success differently than number of hits or viewers. That’s not necessarily appropriate; this is the aggregate demand in media.

Second Life is about the demand at one moment in time.

Is there a lasting value to having them visit an empty corporate presence? It has caused them to think differently about success – maybe building community and starting conversations is a better measure. We’re shifting from a lecture model – traditional media. Online, at best, we create a well-lit place to start a conversation. and think: I should not be dominating.

The ants have a megaphone.

Jeff Jarvis had a Dell that didn’t work. Jarvis blogged about his Dell Hell experience at his blog, Buzz Machine.“Dell Hell” became a bad meme. They didn’t realize how pervasive their experience was. For the first 30 days, Dell didn’t know about it. On Day 30, it came to Dell’s attention. This is an example of why traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore.

Your brand isn’t what YOU say it is. . . it’s what Google says it is

Anderson showed clips from Google trends results for Dell + sucks. Dell can’t influence the WikiPedia entry. To check Google Trends, type in your own company + sucks to find out what people are saying about you, [Note: also an insightful resource to track search trends in general]

Example: Dell + sucks

Dell responded and has become a better company because of it.
The number one city searching for Dell Sucks was Austin.

Dell now has a dedicated staff to watch for blog comments. If you blog about your problem, they’ll get back to you within 7 days.

There was no time for questions or comments from the audience. We met up with Anderson at the book signing where he told our 17-year-old college marketing/social media tracker and our 12-year-old tween marketing advisor he’s thinking of starting a Wired Teen magazine. And, this fall Wired Science will debut on PBS

ad:tech is the number one event for Interactive marketing, the first conferencewas held in 1996

The transformation of ad:tech is underway to become “The Event for Modern Marketing”. ad:tech will be the leading forum to discuss how digital is transforming all media and the business of marketing communications.

ad:tech Global Expansion

9 gobal events in 6 countries 2007, expanding to 12 shows in 2008

Exchange Series: more intimate conversation, all capped at 75, true exchange of ideas

The tone here is professional and impersonal – at least at first. Maybe the sessions warm up with introductions. Drew did say that presenters were encouraged to lead interactive discussions and that attendace capped at 75.

Exhibitors are friendly, informative and generous. I got to meet Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb who gave me a copy of David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” to replace the copy I gave a client. We’re both in the book. In talking shop, I told Joe about our testing between PRWeb and other online press release distribution providers. Given the price, reach, stats and results, we haven’t found anyone yet who can out perform PRWeb.

The Grand Ballroom is much more lifelike when open to the lakefront view. Maybe the doorways were shaded for better screen resolution. Two giant screens framed the stage.

Where was the free wi-fi access? If it was on, I couldn’t tap into it. No mention was made in the opening comments and I didn’t see an overabundance of laptops so maybe for this crowd it’s not necessary? In checking last year’s notes, a sponsor provided the wi-fi.

Were the armed security guards at last year’s exhibit hall? If so, I don’t remember.

If you have a budding marketer or summer intern in your office under 18, leave them at home. They’ll be bounced at the door. Maybe there’s a place – at least at the keynote – for kids. Many organizations offer a student/teen session.

When I asked the person next to me where are you from? They gave me the name of their company. That’s the answer you expect at a corporate conference. Because people there represent companies, they tend to be more formal and business like. After all, you need to be when you’re managing $50,000 per month in online media buys – the minimum one exhibitor mentioned when he described his service. As a former corporate manager and Fortune 50 consultant, it’s good to be aware of what’s new in this market. And, it was really great to hear – and meet – Chris Anderson.

ad:tech is the number one event for Interactive marketing, the first conferencewas held in 1996

The transformation of ad:tech is underway to become “The Event for Modern Marketing”. ad:tech will be the leading forum to discuss how digital is transforming all media and the business of marketing communications.

ad:tech Global Expansion

9 gobal events in 6 countries 2007, expanding to 12 shows in 2008

Exchange Series: more intimate conversation, all capped at 75, true exchange of ideas

The tone here is professional and impersonal – at least at first. Maybe the sessions warm up with introductions. Drew did say that presenters were encouraged to lead interactive discussions and that attendace capped at 75.

Exhibitors are friendly, informative and generous. I got to meet Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb who gave me a copy of David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” to replace the copy I gave a client. We’re both in the book. In talking shop, I told Joe about our testing between PRWeb and other online press release distribution providers. Given the price, reach, stats and results, we haven’t found anyone yet who can out perform PRWeb.

The Grand Ballroom is much more lifelike when open to the lakefront view. Maybe the doorways were shaded for better screen resolution. Two giant screens framed the stage.

Where was the free wi-fi access? If it was on, I couldn’t tap into it. No mention was made in the opening comments and I didn’t see an overabundance of laptops so maybe for this crowd it’s not necessary? In checking last year’s notes, a sponsor provided the wi-fi.

Were the armed security guards at last year’s exhibit hall? If so, I don’t remember.

If you have a budding marketer or summer intern in your office under 18, leave them at home. They’ll be bounced at the door. Maybe there’s a place – at least at the keynote – for kids. Many organizations offer a student/teen session.

When I asked the person next to me where are you from? They gave me the name of their company. That’s the answer you expect at a corporate conference. Because people there represent companies, they tend to be more formal and business like. After all, you need to be when you’re managing $50,000 per month in online media buys – the minimum one exhibitor mentioned when he described his service. As a former corporate manager and Fortune 50 consultant, it’s good to be aware of what’s new in this market. And, it was really great to hear – and meet – Chris Anderson.

Today I shared a these thoughts on book marketing with the members of my teleseminar forum and thought my readers might also benefit from this knowledge.

Last Saturday during the Blog to Book session at BlogHer [the world’s largest blogging conference], I got the microphone wrangling assignment. Let’s just say I ran around – a lot. It’s not surprising that there’s a huge amount of interest from authors on how to market their books.

Key takeaways from this session:

– publishers want to know you have a platform or presence within your market – more and more publishers are requiring that authors blog

– both self-publishing and being published by a major house have its advantages, but most people thought self-publishers made more money

– Wiley’s reps were there and willing to talk; going to a conference like this or BookExpo America is a great way to meet publishers, agents and book marketers. The rep cautioned against a best-seller spike and then drop off.

– even if you have an agent and a publisher, you’ll still have to do some of your own marketing. If you don’t want to do it yourself, think about outsourcing your marketing/PR over the long haul, not just at the launch.

Author Resources I often recommend, not mentioned in the session:

– Rick Frishman’s agency, Planned TV Arts, is a premier book PR agency, Rick’s a big fan of morning drive radio phone interviews. You can sign up for Rick’s free Author 101 Newsletter.

Today I shared a these thoughts on book marketing with the members of my teleseminar forum and thought my readers might also benefit from this knowledge.

Last Saturday during the Blog to Book session at BlogHer [the world’s largest blogging conference], I got the microphone wrangling assignment. Let’s just say I ran around – a lot. It’s not surprising that there’s a huge amount of interest from authors on how to market their books.

Key takeaways from this session:

– publishers want to know you have a platform or presence within your market – more and more publishers are requiring that authors blog

– both self-publishing and being published by a major house have its advantages, but most people thought self-publishers made more money

– Wiley’s reps were there and willing to talk; going to a conference like this or BookExpo America is a great way to meet publishers, agents and book marketers. The rep cautioned against a best-seller spike and then drop off.

– even if you have an agent and a publisher, you’ll still have to do some of your own marketing. If you don’t want to do it yourself, think about outsourcing your marketing/PR over the long haul, not just at the launch.

Author Resources I often recommend, not mentioned in the session:

– Rick Frishman’s agency, Planned TV Arts, is a premier book PR agency, Rick’s a big fan of morning drive radio phone interviews. You can sign up for Rick’s free Author 101 Newsletter.

It’s Saturday night at 8:30 and I’m on the train riding home. Good thing I left the BlogHer conference when I did – my voice is almost gone and the train is almost full.

Like the unspoken tension between Republican and Democrats and stay-at-home and full-time working moms, the paid versus non-paid bloggers at BlogHer sat on two sides of the room. If not literally, certainly philosophically.

But, the issue extends beyond earning money from ad words and tracking traffic versus being proud of low stats and no pay. Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe there is room for every type of blog and every type of writer as well as all levels of compensation – from emotional fulfillment to high hourly rates. So if you respect me, I’ll respect you.

Your audience may not be my audience. That’s a good thing–for both of us. As a professional writer since 1990, I do believe that being compensated for your writing is honorable and ethical under certain conditions.

Getting paid for writing was a novel concept in 1990 when I left my career as a corporate sales manager. But, it was my only option. Career counseling showed I should be a writer or a florist. After interviewing for a job as a florist and figuring out that I’d lose $3 an hour after babysitting, I looked into my second choice: writing.

So, I took not just a plunge, but a deep, deep dive – both financially and professionally. A new computer and printer set me back $5000. And, even though my English grades were always on the A side, I wasn’t sure I really had the write stuff. For seventeen years now, my professional writing was written to be read – by my clients’ clients. Being paid to write is financially, but not always emotionally, rewarding.

At BlogHer, I learned: You are your blog. As simple as that sounds, this was one of the most profound takeaways for me. All of a sudden, I was Wired PR Works. Every post, every category, every comment is part of my virtual fiber. And I want to write more – for me and anyone who finds me via a search, a comment or a link. Maybe someday soon I’ll get around to the getting paid part. . .